


On the naming of abstract loves

by ineptshieldmaid



Series: The Patron Saint of Communicating Like A Fucking Adult [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Background BDSM, M/M, POV Multiple, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, gratuitous use of narrative asynchrony, jokes at the expense of archaeologists, mention of past infidelity, poor decisions, relationship tags listed in order of narrative impmortance, small exercises of gratuitous switzerland localisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 05:16:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10802508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineptshieldmaid/pseuds/ineptshieldmaid
Summary: The back of Chris's neck prickles. Anyone else, he’d know what he can ask, and what tone he can ask it in. Chris has been enmeshed in a shifting web of open relationships for long enough, now, to feel like he officially knows what he’s doing.The thing with Viktor and Yuri - but not, apparently, with Viktor alone - throws all that out of balance.





	On the naming of abstract loves

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to saraaah for alpha responses and beta-checking, and dance_across for letting me email chunks of this at her for days. And to Niyalune for help with French. (What French, you say? The fic is in English, but nominally many of the conversations are in French, and I got all tied up trying to avoid idioms that aren't easily transferable when talking about open relationships.)
> 
> Before proceeding further I direct your attention to the tags: note the polyamory ones. If you can't stomach the idea of Viktor and Yuri independently interacting with romantic partners other than each other, don't come complaining to me about it. There's plenty of nice monogamous ship fic you could be reading instead of this.
> 
> Further caveats & notes for commenting at the end.

**April 2019**

14.30: Safe in hotel. Did not get lost, or traumatise any flight attendants.  
Yuri <3<3<3, 14.32: Good work. Love you. Call me?

Viktor looks around the hotel room, figures he has time to kill, and hits the call button.

‘Why does the airport here always smell of cheese?’ he asks, as soon as Yuri picks up.

‘I…’ Yuri says, evidently not quite prepared for that topic. ‘Does it?’

‘Yes!’ Viktor flings himself backward onto the bed. He still has his shoes on, which would cause Yuri to frown at him in that adorable way he does. ‘You remember it! There’s a Cheese Smell Zone near the exit to the station!’

Yuri’s laugh is warm, and even though it’s familiar Viktor is never, ever going to get tired of it. ‘I remember you complaining about it, certainly. Did Chris meet you?’

‘Yeah,’ Viktor says. Chris had come to meet him, which is the only reason he took the train and not a taxi like a normal person. Chris was armed with free day passes for the public transport system, which is apparently a thing that hotels and events offer in Geneva. ‘He had to go and meet someone to do something, we’re having dinner with Lambiel later.’

‘Very specific,’ Yuri says.

Viktor stares at the ceiling and wishes Yuri were here. He knows why Yuri isn’t, and he doesn’t _mind_ , he just… wishes. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, concerning Chris's meetings. ‘Organising these things seems impossible.’

‘I remember,’ Yuri says, and there’s a soft sound which is probably him stretching out on the couch, or in bed. ‘Phichit’s ice show drove him mad.’

‘Ugh,’ Viktor says, suddenly reminded of another thing this show has in common with Phichit’s. ‘Chris is bringing children to the rehearsal tomorrow.’

‘ _His_ children?’

‘I don’t know,’ Viktor says. ‘Could be Lambiel’s. There will be children, and they will want me to sign things.’ After a second, he adds, ‘By children I mean novices, not biological offspring.’

Yuri makes an undignified snorting noise. ‘If Chris has had children since we last saw him, I would have so many questions.’

‘Starting with _with whom_ ,’ Viktor agrees, and tries to ignore the fact that his face kind of heats up at the thought of when he and Yuri had last seen Chris. That had been, as they say, a Good Time.

‘Give him a kiss from me,’ Yuri says, and the breathy little hint in his voice suggests he’s remembering more or less the same thing.

‘Already did that,’ Viktor says. One advantage to it having been Chris, not Stéphane, who met him at the airport: in the relative anonymity of people hustling around the arrivals hall, one man hugging the daylights out of another and then delivering him a kiss as a message from a third went unremarked, in a way it wouldn't have in a hotel lobby.

‘Did you give him one from you, too?’ Yuri asks.

‘Yes,’ Viktor says. And then, ‘It’d be weird not to, wouldn’t it?’ He and Yuri have been over this. He and _Chris_ have been over this, rather less fluently. ‘Just a kiss,’ Viktor says, ‘that’s all.’

‘Mmm.’ Yuri hums, like he might be about to say something else, but doesn’t.

‘Don’t push it.’ Viktor knows he sounds snappy, but can’t quite modulate it.

‘Sorry,’ Yuri says, low. ‘It’s just. You know you _can_ , right?’

‘Yeah, and you _could_ go out dancing and pick up anyone you like,’ Viktor says. Yuri laughs at that, a proper, sparkling laugh. ‘Maybe I will,’ he says.

Viktor’s surprised into silence for a second, because that’s hardly Yuri’s usual response to the idea of nightclubs.

‘Joking,’ Yuri says, into the silence.

‘You don’t have to be,’ Viktor says, and he can feel himself smiling. ‘Just… tell me if you do?’

He’s not actually doubting that Yuri would. Not anymore. They have a _pattern_ now. This pattern mostly involves Chris, to be fair. Still, the thing with the girl in Fukuoka in January had even been fine, if a bit disorienting. Yuri had regretted it later - not because Viktor hadn't been there, but because he and the girl hardly knew each other. Viktor doesn't mind that bit so much. Viktor likes the thought that even strangers see Yuri and want to touch him, want to grind up against him in nightclubs and maybe take him home. Mostly, though, he likes the thought of Yuri having fun, so if Yuri decides picking up girls at parties isn't for him, then Viktor doesn't want him to do that.

‘Of course I’d tell you,’ Yuri says. After a moment, the traces of laughter in his voice give way to frustration. ‘Ugh. I should _sleep_ ,’ he says. ‘I have to get the early train tomorrow. Did I mention that I hate photo shoots?’

‘Only eleven thousand times,’ Viktor says. 

‘Well, I do.’

‘You should sleep.’ Viktor wants, very much, to kiss him, but that’s geographically impossible right now. ‘If you have to be photographed, at least turn up looking halfway awake.’

‘You give the best pep talks,’ Yuri says, and smothers a yawn. ‘Love you.’

* * *

It’s not actually as weird as Chris had expected, watching Viktor on the ice again. Chris had loved ice shows - they cater to his inner exhibitionist, and although he never gets a performance high off them like he does from competition, they pay, which competition doesn’t. So he’d expected it to hurt, watching Viktor take his turn with Stéphane and the others: but it doesn’t. Perhaps it doesn’t hurt because Chris has spent increasingly frantic weeks running around in circles, trying to keep everything on the rails for this damn event. That it succeeds feels like a triumph he can share in.

What is weird, fundamentally and incredibly weird, is seeing Viktor at the bout the next day. He knew it’d happen: he’d arranged for Annalies to pick Viktor up from the train station and bring him along, and Viktor’s suitcase is in the back of Anna’s car to be transported, along with Viktor, to Chris's apartment that night. It’s still weird.

The thing is, Chris has been back on the ice since not long after his surgery - he trains novices, and Stéphane is making noises about introducing him to coaching prospects. At this point, he probably could be lining up professional shows for next season, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to try more than waltz jumps and singles. He’s only doing those because one of the novices he’s working with is ready for them: without a coach himself, and without the timeframes of the competitive season ahead, he’s not pushing his recovery. Opinion among those who know him is evenly divided between seeing that as a good sign (his parents, his doctor, and sometimes Théo) and a dire warning (his former rinkmates, Anna, and also sometimes Théo).

At some point over the winter, fed up with Chris moping, Anna had dragged him along with her one evening, strapped him into a pair of borrowed roller-skates, and Chris hadn’t hated it. Now this is what he does for fun: referees roller derby. It’s not as if he has any trouble keeping up with the speed of the game; his position inside the track means he’s in probably the least danger of anyone there; and he didn’t need anyone to teach him to fall properly. He loves it. 

And yet, he realises, seeing Viktor sitting alone and stiff in the bleachers, he realises: this is the first time anyone he knows from ice skating has seen a derby game. If it weren’t for the fact that the bout and Stéphane’s show happen to be on the same weekend, Chris might never even have mentioned it.

‘Holy shit,’ Viktor says, when Chris fights his way out of the tangle of celebrating skaters at the end of the bout. ‘That was... something.’

‘Awesome, isn’t it?’ Chris is sticky with sweat, and even though his team lost, he’s mentally replaying particularly impressive assists and blocks. And some notable penalties, for that matter.

‘I have absolutely no idea what happened out there,’ Viktor says, gesturing toward the track, where skaters from both teams are currently forming a human pile-up. ‘Annalies tried to explain in the car, and I thought I understood, but…’

Chris shrugs. ‘Understanding is optional,’ he says. ‘Most people here don’t understand what’s going on.’

‘What,’ Viktor says, looking around him, ‘they’re just here to watch women beat each other up on wheels?’

‘Pretty much,’ Chris says. He grins. ‘Told you it was awesome.’

‘I can’t believe nobody got injured during that,’ Viktor says. Down on the track, a jammer from each team has climbed onto the shoulders of a blocker and they’re wrestling.

‘Lucky week,’ Chris says, shaking his head. ‘I’ve only been doing this for a few months, and some of the falls I’ve seen these girls take…’

‘Remind me,’ Viktor says, ‘Annalies got you doing this because she thought it’d be _good_ for your confidence, is that right?’

‘Watching other people get hurt is good perspective,’ Chris says, just about managing to keep a straight face. ‘Also,’ he points to his knees, ‘we get to wear kneepads here.’

* * *

**Late 2018**

‘Viktor?’ Yuri looked up from his tablet, and over at Viktor, who was sprawled on the floor. Viktor didn’t care that there was a perfectly good armchair he could be sitting in: he liked the floor. It was their floor, and not the floor of any of the various hotels they’d spent too much time in the past few months.

‘Yes, love?’

‘Can we go somewhere? After the Grand Prix?’

Viktor blinked at him in surprise, and was about to protest that they both needed to be training for Nationals, when he remembered that they _didn’t_. Yuri did, but for once, they weren’t going to spend December spread thin across half the globe and between two different competitions.

‘I can afford to take a week, I think,’ Yuri said, and Viktor didn’t argue with him.

‘Where do you want to go?’ Viktor asked, and Yuri just smiled.

‘Let me surprise you.’

Yuri directed Viktor’s packing for Vancouver, and all Viktor could determined was that wherever they’re going after was probably in the northern hemisphere, and probably not _colder_ than Canada in winter. That left quite a lot of possibilities. It wasn’t until the day before they were due to leave Vancouver - armed with one more medal, this one bronze, and a stuffed beaver that had been garnering them both an impressive array of inappropriate comments ever since Viktor bought it - that Yuri produced an actual hard-copy itinerary, and handed it over.

‘Does he know we’re coming?’ Viktor asked.

‘Of course,’ Yuri said, like having a proper conversation with Chris wasn’t something Viktor had been trying and struggling to do ever since Chris left Japan at the end of the summer. He’d had the knee operation, and did text Viktor about it before posting instagram shots of his new scar. There were some photos from his grandparents’ place, and some with Théo, so Viktor supposed that relationship must be okay, or at least still extant. Chris sent some good luck texts to Yuri throughout the Grand Prix series, but any of Viktor’s attempts to find out more - how is Chris actually going, are he and Théo really okay, will Chris be back on the ice for the spring ice shows - had disappeared into the electronic ether and gone unanswered.

Viktor stood there for a moment, staring at the itinerary, and trying to figure out why this, of all surprises, he didn’t seem to like. Yuri stepped closer, pulled Viktor to him until their foreheads rested against each other.

‘We’re staying in the city,’ Yuri said. ‘I don’t… I don’t know what he’ll want from us.’

‘Or be willing to give us.’ It helped, a bit, knowing that this was supposed to be uncertain. Yuri had planned it that way.

‘Well,’ Yuri said, ‘he’s agreed to show us around the day after we get there.’ Pulling back a little, he smiled, like he was remembering a joke. ‘And he said, I quote, _oh my god I can finally feed Viktor fondue_. And then he felt bad about it, because there’s no way _I_ can eat nothing but cheese for dinner mid-season.’

Viktor, who had been about to laugh at the fondue - he’d been to visit Chris in the summer before, and Chris had insisted that no self-respecting person ate fondue in July - shook his head. ‘Oh. I wouldn’t want to, then,’ he said.

‘You should, though,’ Yuri said. ‘You and Chris should eat _all the cheese_ and let me watch you.’

‘You make that sound dirty.’ 

‘I don’t know where you get these ideas,’ Yuri said, serenely. ‘I think perhaps everything sounds dirty to you.’

* * *

**April 2019**

Anna drops Chris and Viktor off at Chris's apartment. 

‘You didn’t want to go to the party?' Viktor asks, as the two women who’d been riding in the back with Chris rearrange themselves in the considerably-emptier car. Normally Chris would go with Anna and the team to whatever after-party has been organised, but normally, he hasn’t spent three days in Geneva running in circles trying to prevent an ice show dissolving into logistical disaster.

‘Not this time,’ Chris says. Viktor continues to look vaguely guilty, as the car pulls away. Chris rolls his eyes, hefts his gear bag and heads for the door. ‘I’m _tired_ ,’ he says, over his shoulder. ‘And I know you are, too.’

The apartment is a bit musty, so Chris bustles around opening windows and curtains. He’s in the middle of making tea, when he notices Viktor is just sort of hovering in the doorway of the main room, looking lost. 

‘Yeah, uh,’ Chris says, as he realises that his home is much less nice than the apartment Viktor shares with Yuri. It’s nice enough, but it’s a one-bedroom apartment: there’s limits to how nice those can be. It’s certainly nowhere in the league of the place Viktor owns in Saint Petersburg. ‘You maybe should’ve taken Stéphane up on his offer of his spare room for the week, his place is a lot nicer than mine.’ 

They’re doing the show again next week: Chris's suggestion that Viktor should stay with him for the week had been genuine, but also practical. The fewer people they have to accommodate in Geneva between shows, the better the bottom line. Also, no one wants to be stuck in Geneva for a week.

‘Your place is nice,’ Viktor says, loyally. He looks around again, and back into the room that is both dining and living room. ‘Should I have, though?’

‘Should you… what?’

Viktor closes his eyes for a second, and then says, ‘No, sorry, that’s ridiculous.’ The electric kettle snaps off in the kitchen behind Chris, at the same time as Chris realises that Viktor is _nervous_. Eleven years, Chris thinks. Eleven years, and _multiple_ threesomes, and the man is nervous just being in Chris apartment. 

He ignores the kettle and wraps his arms around Viktor. Viktor makes a startled noise, and then remembers how hugs work. 

‘Viktor,’ Chris says, very solemn, ‘I’m happy you’re here and I invited you because I wanted you to stay with me.’ Chris would love to laugh at him, but it’s less than a year since Viktor had to convince him that yes, he and Yuri really wouldn’t mind Chris staying in their spare room. 

‘It’s a pretty decent couch,’ Chris says, turning back to the kitchen and the tea. ‘Or, and I make this offer with no designs on your person whatsoever, my bed is large and comfortable.’

‘I, uh,’ Viktor says, and follows Chris into the kitchen proper. That means Chris stands on his toe when he turns to get mugs, and Viktor yelps, and there’s a bit of a scuffle. ‘No, uh, couch is fine,’ Viktor says. He’s faintly pink, and maybe that’s from the foot-treading-on incident, or maybe it’s the thought of Chris's bed. Chris decides to believe the latter. 

He’s genuine in having no designs on Viktor’s person - at least, not right now. Chris isn’t quite sure what the logic behind it is, but it’s been clear since he met Viktor in Geneva that Viktor’s not here as Chris's lover.Viktor had kissed him once, for Yuri, and once for himself. The first had been teasing, and explained in English; the second, almost chaste, and accompanied by a switch to French. 

Viktor uses French with him, more or less interchangeably with English, but that only started a few years after they stopped sleeping together: Viktor had spent a summer in Paris and enlisted Chris for conversation practice. For the most part, with Yuri and Viktor, Chris uses English. It wasn’t a deliberate decision, more a courtesy, and not one that stopped Chris from pulling out a few phrases to better play on Viktor’s weaknesses. But now, the switch pretty clearly designates French the language of Chris and Viktor Not Having Sex. 

Chris doesn’t _mind_ , exactly. Viktor not wanting to sleep with him is, in the grand scheme of his relationship with Viktor, something he’s used to. He just wishes he understood why right now, and the fact that he’s old enough to know that some things don’t really _have_ a why doesn’t make him feel better.

* * *

Yuri <3<3<3, 15.27: Viktor?  
Yuri, <3<3<3, 15.29: Are you free?  
16.07: Yuri! Sorry. I was cycling. I don’t think I believe there’s a single flat surface that isn’t man-made in this city.  
16.08: I miss you. I miss your face. What should I buy for dinner?  
16.08: Why are you even awake?  
Yuri <3<3<3, 16.09: I don’t know.  
Yuri <3<3<3, 16.09: I kissed Yuko.  
Yuri <3<3<3, 16.10: I didn’t plan to. And, um. That was it.  
16.10: Okay. Wow. That’s it?  
16.10: Fuck it I’m buying ice cream and ordering pizza for dinner.  
Yuri <3<3<3, 16.10: Yeah, that’s it. Well. I apologised? Takeshi wasn’t there.

Viktor stares down at his phone and tries to figure out which thing he needs to say first. There’s ‘go for it!’ and there’s ‘what the hell?’ and probably ‘how do you actually feel about this, Yuri?’

16.12: Give me ten minutes to get back to Chris's place (he’s out, don’t worry) and I’ll call you.

* * *

Chris lets himself into his apartment and is just about to call out when he registers the sound of Viktor’s voice, talking in English. He tries to make extra noise on his way into his bedroom, so Viktor knows Chris is there and not interrupting. He mentally does the time difference calculation and feels a stab of worry: it’s almost midnight in Japan. But then, it’s off-season; Yuri can afford to stay up late talking sweet nothings at this time of year.

Chris hangs up his skates and, after a second’s consideration, swaps his workout gear for jeans and a shirt. He’s only been teaching - one of the smaller, older groups of novices who are doing both skating and dancing - so it’s not as if his sweats are offensive to the senses, but he might as well dress halfway nice when he has company. He’s rounding up other clothes for the hamper, and debating whether to interrupt Viktor to demand his laundry as well, when Viktor sticks his head in through the door.

Viktor hasn’t bothered to change out of his exercise gear, and his hair is standing on end from what Chris assumes is a combination of the bike helmet and then running his own fingers through it.

‘Hey,’ Chris says. ‘Good ride?’ He’d left Viktor with the key to the bike shed and the combination for Chris's lock, and a dire warning about the vertical tendencies of the neighbourhood.

‘Uh,’ Viktor says. He hesitates and then says, ‘Steep,’ which is about what Chris expected. 

The back of Chris's neck prickles. Anyone else, he’d know what he can ask, and what tone he can ask it in. When Théo’s travelling with him, and Anna calls, Chris leaves them alone because he’s a polite person with a sense of boundaries. But Théo tends to bring him, if not the phone, then a message from Anna. Anna calls him herself, sometimes, or more often texts. The point is: Chris has been enmeshed in a shifting web of open relationships for long enough, now, to feel like he officially knows what he’s doing. 

The thing with Viktor and Yuri - but not, apparently, with Viktor alone - throws all that out of balance.

What he wants, he realises, is to blow mock-kisses and say to Viktor ‘say hi to Yuri for me’. And to have Viktor laugh at his antics but relay the message. It’s probably not an impossible dynamic, but given Viktor’s just got _off_ the phone, not an immediately actionable plan either.

‘I’m about to do laundry, have you got anything?’ Chris asks. 

‘Yuri kissed Yuko,’ Viktor blurts.

‘Yuri… what?’ Chris, who’d been about to pick up the hamper, puts it back down again. He actually looks at Viktor properly, and registers something he should’ve realised earlier. Viktor’s not just tousle-haired and distracted from being on the phone. He’s also not completely okay. 

‘Kissed Yuko,’ Viktor repeats. ‘You know, his friend.’

Chris knows, in the sense that he’s met Yuko, and her husband, and her three hyperactive children. He also knows, in the sense that he knows - very much in hindsight, but he knows - that Yuri has slept with Yuko and her husband Takeshi before, early on in Viktor and Yuri’s marriage. Viktor and Yuri survived that: Viktor admits to having handled it badly to begin with, but when he told Chris about it last summer, he hadn’t seemed to be holding any grudges.

Chris swallows down multiple conflicting urges to over-react. He does not wrap his arms around Viktor and try to soothe him. He doesn’t dive for his phone and try to find out if it’s possible to punch someone via Skype. He doesn’t freak out about the fact that getting over-protective of Viktor at Yuri’s expense is about the stupidest impulse he’s had for a while. Nor does he leer and suggest that Yuri has great taste in women as well as men, although, from what he remembers of Yuko, that is probably true.

‘I take it,’ he says, sitting down on the bed and making space for Viktor to join him, ‘that that didn’t go smoothly.’

Viktor hesitates, and then sits down beside Chris. Another half-second, and he stretches out on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

‘It could have gone worse,’ Viktor says. There’s a moment’s pause, and then he says, ‘I’m not angry with him.’

Chris spares himself a moment to wonder what the hell he did to deserve to end up in this conversation. Of course, he knows what he did, and he’d do all of it again, from blowing Viktor in a dressing room through to hooking up with him and Yuri both in their hotel in December. Still.

‘Are you actually okay?’ Chris asks, ‘Or are you telling yourself you’re not angry because you think you’re not allowed to be?’

‘No, I’m really not angry,’ Viktor says, propping himself up on his elbows. ‘Why would I be?’

Chris refuses to think about Viktor shoving him into a wall, ten years ago. He reminds himself very firmly that ten years is a long time and Viktor has changed a _lot_. And, he adds to that, Yuri is not the deliberately provocative asshole Chris had been.

‘Did you know this was going to happen?’ Chris asks. He knows they _have_ talked about sleeping with people other than him. Yuri is, specifically, curious about sleeping with women, a sentiment which Viktor seems to endorse.

‘No,’ Viktor says, but he says it sort of slowly, like he’s not certain if he did know. There’s a pause, and then, ‘I thought he should, actually, but I didn’t mean...’

‘Mean what?’

‘Mean for it to go wrong, I guess,’ Viktor says. 

Chris relaxes a bit, and stretches out on the bed next to Viktor. ‘You know, you haven’t told me what went wrong about it.’ He turns his head to catch Viktor’s eye, and resists an impulse to snuggle up to him. It’s not even a sexual impulse, and a few years ago, he’d probably have followed through on it and trusted in his and Viktor’s combined ability to outlast any resulting weirdness. Now, he’s not so sure.

‘Oh.’ Viktor blinks for a second. ‘Oh. Yuko stopped him, and her husband wasn’t there, and now Yuri feels terrible.’

Of course. Kiss first, talk later: the Yuri Katsuki motto. One of approximately three things Yuri ever does without proper forethought and planning (item two is ‘panic’ and item three is ‘get engaged’).

‘Awkward,’ Chris confirms. 

Viktor turns over, propping himself up so he’s looking down at Chris. He rubs absently at the his wedding ring with his right thumb. ‘I just,’ he says. ‘I just… I could’ve told him he shouldn’t have started it that way.’

Chris doesn’t bother pointing out that practically _anyone_ with a brain could’ve told Yuri that. 

‘Some mistakes have to be made to be learned from,’ he says, instead. He catches Viktor’s hand and wraps his own around it: not lacing their fingers together, but enfolding Viktor’s hand in both of his. ‘I don’t want to sound superior about this, but it’s not that uncommon.’

Chris has to walk a fine line with this: he knows that, in the past, Viktor has elected not to talk to Chris for fear of Chris giving him smug polyamorous advice. Not to mention that if he wants to repeat the liason with Viktor-and-Yuri, it would be in his interests not to patronise them too much.

‘What isn’t?’ Viktor asks. He’s still leaving his hand in Chris's grasp, and even smiling a little. ‘Kissing people inadvisably?’

Chris has to laugh. ‘Well, yeah, that’s not uncommon either. But I meant… well. People tend to make more avoidable mistakes right after they, you know,’ he releases one hand from around Viktor’s to make a vague gesture, ‘move into polyamory.’ 

Viktor just raises one eyebrow at him. ‘Move into polyamory?’

Chris shrugs, and tries an English idiom he’s never really liked. ‘ _Open up a marriage_? You tell me what you’re calling it.’ 

Viktor blinks for a second, and then laughs. ‘I have no idea,’ he says. ‘Too many languages, too much vocabulary.’ He pulls his hand free and covers his eyes with it, and adds, in English, ‘You have no idea how weird it gets sometimes.’

Chris rolls his eyes. ‘You try trying to find a nice guy in a club in Berlin to tie you up and whip you, only to find both of you are using your third or fourth language. At least you’re talking to someone you’ve met more than once.’ 

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ Viktor says, ‘in the unlikely event I decide I want to be tied up and whipped in a club.’

Chris does not say _if you decide you want that, darling, call me, I know people_. Viktor is quiet for another moment, and then makes a face.

‘Ugh,’ he says. ‘I’m lying all over your bed in sweaty workout clothes. Sorry. I should go and shower.’

‘Toss your clothes out before you get in the shower, and I’ll put them in the washer with mine,’ Chris says.

Viktor gives him an arch look, stands up, and peels off his shirt and sweatpants. He drops them in Chris's hamper and saunters off in the direction of the bathroom, with neither a comment nor any apparent problem with Chris checking him out as he goes. Chris makes a point of enjoying the view, before getting up and getting on with the laundry.

* * *

**December 2018**

‘By the way, Lambiel might call you. I gave him your number.’ Chris had to raise his voice a little to be heard over the buzz of the room, but not by much: the band, at least, were on a break. He’d brought them to an eminently civilised venue, where they had a reserved table, and waiters came around to take drinks orders rather than anyone having to queue at the bar. 

Viktor, who had looking around and wondering where Yuri had got to, turned to look at him. ‘What for?’ 

He ran a mental calculation, and concluded that, aside from briefly congratulating Yuri on his Grand Prix season, this was the first time Chris had mentioned anything even vaguely related to skating in the past few days. He seemed okay - better than Viktor had feared, given the months of erratic texts and next to nothing on social media. Evidently he’d managed to patch things up with Théo, because Théo came to meet them at the end of the day they’d spent sightseeing, and joined them for dinner. But, in comparison to what Viktor could remember of Théo from meeting him at competitions, Théo seemed more cautious, more solicitous of Chris. Like he was handling a convalescent, or possibly an unexploded bomb. Chris seemed to lean into the care, a bit, at least.

‘He’s organising a show,’ Chris said. ‘For April. Crispino pulled out, and he asked me, but… I’m not going to be fit for it.’

‘Yuri has the Team Trophy in April,’ Viktor said, immediately. ‘I have to be there for that.’

Chris shifted in his seat, and swirled the wine around in his glass. ‘Just talk to him? The dates might not clash.’

Viktor had the distinct feeling he was being roped into something to assuage Chris's misplaced sense of guilt. He was actually okay with that.

‘Where’d Yuri go, anyway?’ Chris asked, abruptly changing the topic. 

‘Bathrooms maybe?’ Viktor wasn’t sure. He looked around, and not for the first time, wished Yuri were taller - or dyed his hair, or something. Yuri could always find Viktor in a crowd, and Viktor would’ve been happy to believe this was because he had a specially tuned sense for Viktor’s location, but he’d been informed it was because Viktor was tall and had really distinctive hair.

‘There,’ Chris said, nodding toward the side of the stage. Viktor had to peer for a second longer, and then realised Yuri had been obscured from his line of sight by a tall woman and her impressive hair. Short at the back, tall and curled on top, with a distinct flavour of ‘tribute to the artist formerly known as Prince’ about it. Viktor realised, at about the same moment that he realised Yuri was gazing up at her from underneath his lashes in his unconsciously coquettish way, that she was the cellist from the band.

Yuri touched her arm, and leans up to say something into her ear. Whatever it is, she laughed, and pulled away only long enough to pick up something from the edge of the stage. It turned out to be a harmonica: Viktor couldn’t hear the result, but she put it to her mouth and played something that made Yuri laugh in turn, eyes sparkling.

Viktor’s attention was dragged away by Chris's hand on _his_ arm. Chris didn’t say anything, just wrapped his fingers around Viktor’s wrist, and gave him a raised-eyebrow look. 

The woman, Viktor realised, looked quite a lot like the girl Chris had been chatting up the day he and Chris really fell apart. Not just because she was black: the hair was different, and her face more angular, but the cellist was tall and muscular like the American skater had been, and Viktor remembered, suddenly, all the things Chris had said about things he might have wanted that woman to do to, or with, him. About how she might have fucked him, if Chris had brought a dildo and harness, and Chris had talked like that was just as much his idea of fun as being fucked by a man. Only in Viktor’s head now, the mental image had become Yuri, manhandled by the cellist. Up against a wall. Pinned to a bed. 

Yuri did a little shimmy, presumably to the tune of whatever the cellist was playing on her harmonica, and Viktor’s imagination readjusted: this time, the woman was sprawled out on a bed, back against a pile of pillows, and Yuri was riding her, hips rolling and thighs clenched in ways Viktor knew by heart, but this woman wouldn’t. She’d have to be impressed, captivated, the way Viktor always was, but maybe she wouldn’t show it so easily. And _she_ wouldn’t feel every ripple on her cock the way Viktor did, so she wouldn’t lose patience and start to thrust up into him. She’d lean back, tease him a little, urge him on, and Yuri would be torn between the feel of the dildo inside him and the need to make everything, every little twist and sensation, into a show for her.

And then when they were done, Yuri would lick the mess up off her and she’d wrap those long thighs around his head, and…

‘Hey,’ Chris said, into Viktor’s ear. ‘Are you…?’

Viktor just blinked at him, startled out of his fantasy. Startled _by_ the fantasy. He mentally rewound through it at high speed. Where was _he_ in all that? Watching? 

Chris was still looking at him with concern. ‘I can tell you to calm the fuck down, he’s barely even flirting,’ Chris said. And then, ‘Or I can go over there and cause a distraction.’ He looked like he was surprised to find the latter part coming out of his mouth.

Viktor’s suddenly-overactive imagination added Chris, wrapped around the woman from behind instead of the pillows she’d been lying on before. He’d cup and stroke her breasts while Yuri fucked himself onto the strap-on.

Viktor wouldn’t even be there, he realised. Not even watching. He imagined Yuri flushed and half-embarrassed, afterwards, recounting fragments to Viktor over coffee. But he wasn’t there.

‘Viktor.’ Chris's voice was sharp, cutting through the shock of that last unexpected addition to Viktor’s speculation. He reached out, hand at the back of Viktor’s neck, and pulled him forward until their foreheads rested together. ‘I’ll go over there and break that up, but for fuck’s sake, don’t make me watch you flip out at Yuri about it after.’

‘I’m not,’ Viktor said. His voice came out kind of crackly. ‘Would it be weird if I sent them both a drink?’ he asked, helpless. Was that even a thing people did?

Chris stilled for a second, and then he let Viktor go. ‘Ohhhh,’ he said. ‘Oh, is that how it is?’

Viktor wasn’t sure how it was. Viktor wasn’t sure of anything, except that sooner or later Yuri probably would remember Viktor was there and feel like he had to walk away from the beautiful, beautiful woman.

‘Maybe?’ 

A few agonizing seconds passed. There was a flurry of motion at the stage end of the room, and Viktor saw the cellist had left Yuri and was re-tuning her instrument as the rest of the band bustled around sorting out theirs. Yuri had disappeared.

He reappeared a few minutes later, with another round of drinks - which was a pointless waste of lining-up-at-the-bar time, in Viktor’s opinion, because there were actual waiters here who came around to take your orders. He accepted the glass of wine Yuri handed him anyway.

‘I don’t know anything about wine,’ Yuri said, handing Chris his. ‘But this one’s local, at least?’

Chris shrugged, and took a sip.

‘You should’ve bought the cello lady a drink,’ Viktor said. Yuri’s eyes snapped to his for a moment, and he must have liked what he saw there, because he there was a slow, wicked smile, almost a smirk, on his face as he sat down. 

‘I just bought drinks for the two most attractive people in this room’ Yuri said, turning the smirk on Chris in turn. ‘I’ve got no regrets.’

They didn’t have to work very hard to convince Chris to come back to their hotel with them, that night.

* * *

**April 2019**

‘Is it weird if I'm… disappointed?’ Viktor asks, and Chris realises he's talking about Yuri’s ill-advised kissing adventures again. They’re on Chris's couch, eating the ice cream that was all Viktor managed to buy at the supermarket. Viktor had wanted to order pizza, but Chris, in a fit of responsibility, over-ruled him in favour of knocking together stir-fry. The ice cream will do for the day’s indulgence.

They haven't been talking about Yuri since Viktor went to shower.

‘Does it matter if it's weird?’ Chris asks, and Viktor just looks at him. ‘Disappointed how?’

Viktor pulls his knees up until he's sideways on the couch, feet tucked under Chris's leg.

‘Maybe I'm just frustrated,’ Viktor says. ‘I could've told him that wasn't the way to go about it.’ He locks his fingers together around his own legs.

Chris sighs. ‘Everyone thinks it's straight-up jealousy that's the hardest bit,’ he says. ‘Maybe for some people it is. I've always found the hard bit is you don't get to control the things that go wrong. You can be doing everything right by your partner and you have to sit back and let them fuck things up with someone else.’

‘And you decided to do this why, exactly?’ Viktor asks.

‘Oh, I enjoy fucking things up with new and interesting people,’ Chris says, light. Then he realises he's never actually explained the _why_ part to Viktor. He'd presented it as a done deal: _yeah, I'm seeing someone. Her name's Yulia. We're polyamorous._ Viktor had even met Yulia, during that summer when Viktor was in Paris. He’d been perfectly charming, and given no sign that he was concerned enough about Chris's life choices to be researching polyamory on his own time. 

He looks over at Viktor, curled up in a tense bundle on Chris's couch, trying to work his way through something Chris has been doing for years now. Something which, in all likelihood, he wouldn’t have fallen into at all if it weren’t for Chris. Chris plucks out a truth and offers it to Viktor:

‘I started this because Yulia was already poly,’ he says, ‘and as we all know, I am eager to do what beautiful women tell me.’ Viktor snickers at that, and relaxes a little. ‘I continued… practicing polyamory because I _like_ it.’ Chris shapes the sentence carefully, watching Viktor’s face for the flicker of incomprehension he expects - either as a result of unfamiliar vocabulary, or the content. ‘You know as well as I do that skating might as well be a primary partner in its own right.’ Viktor nods. ‘Well, I could deal with that by dating only other athletes, but that gets boring. And yet I want to be with people who have their own lives: careers, hobbies, and whole other relationships.’ 

There’s a moment’s silence, while Viktor processes that. Chris waits to see if he’ll quote back some of the things Chris said last summer, about Théo not needing him when Théo has Anna and a whole life of his own, but Viktor doesn’t bring that up.

‘I thought,’ Viktor says, and he rests his chin on his knees. ‘I thought it was about being with more people. For you, I mean. I thought it was because you…’ He pauses, evidently reassessing, and then, with a look of determination, forges onwards. ‘I thought it was because of your kinks. Like maybe not everyone you date meets all of your needs, like that.’

Chris is surprised by the surge of defensive feeling he gets at that, and the words ‘Théo could’ come out of his mouth before he’s even really thought about it. He puts a hand out before Viktor can apologise, rests it on Viktor’s ankle. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘That’s… part of it.’ He’s used to people thinking the main motivation behind his relationship choices is either kink or an ingrained reluctance to keep it in his pants. Those are easy explanations, and they save him from having to talk about the other stuff with people who probably won’t get it.

Viktor, though. Chris doesn’t know if Viktor gets it, yet, but it will be much easier for Viktor (and Yuri. And, for that matter, Chris) if he can.

‘Polyamory is satisfying in other ways,’ Chris says, carefully. ‘I _like_ it. I like that I get to have Anna in my life as well as Théo.’

‘Le compersion,’ Viktor says, in what would be a sophisticated tone of voice if he hadn’t got the gender of the word the wrong way around. Whatever language he did his research in, it wasn’t French.

‘La compersion,’ Chris corrects, and makes a face. ‘I don’t like it much, as a term, but I guess that’s it. I never figured out how it’s different from feeling happy for your friends in _their_ relationships. Or,’ he adds, ‘with their collections of gold medals.’ 

Viktor nods, and, unlike every non-athlete Chris has made that joke to, doesn’t start expounding on how love isn’t a competition. Of course he doesn’t: this is the man who made his own wedding contingent on his fiancé beating him to a gold medal.

‘Does it work with casual sex, too?’ Viktor asks. ‘If Théo picks up someone in a bar, do you… does that make you happy?’

‘Yeah,’ Chris says. ‘When it works out. I like knowing other people are having great sex,’ he says, with a smirk. ‘Especially if I’m doing something shitty like physical therapy instead.’

Viktor doesn’t leer back at him, but frowns for a moment like he’s digesting an important idea. ‘That,’ he says, at length. ‘I think I’m disappointed about that.’

‘You’re disappointed because you’re stuck here?’ Chris tries not to feel wounded by that. He’d like to think he’s more fun than physical therapy, really.

Viktor shakes his head. ‘No. I mean… I wanted that. What you described. If Yuko, or Yuko and Takeshi both, had taken him home and treated him well, I’d have been… I wanted that and I wanted to be _happy_ for him.’

Chris's heart decides to flop over at that. He remembers, with sharp clarity, Viktor’s confused, uncertain expression and the way he’d said _Yuri wants you and I think I’m okay with that_. This is both far removed from that, and also seems like its natural extension.

He reaches out and touches Viktor’s temple, right on his ever-receding widow’s peak. Viktor doesn’t startle away, so Chris runs his fingers through Viktor’s hair. 

‘It’s the price we’ve got to pay,’ Chris says. ‘The disappointment and the frustration. It’s the price for the times when it does work out.’

Viktor leans his head into Chris's touch, and doesn’t say anything in answer.

* * *

‘Hey,’ Yuri says, smiling up at Viktor from the tablet screen. 

‘Hey, love.’

‘Is Chris around?’ Yuri actually looks from left to right, like he can see out of the screen. It’s kind of adorable.

‘He’s in the other room,’ Viktor says. ‘He said,’ and here Viktor flushes, ‘the walls are fairly thin so keep it decent unless we _want_ an audience.’

‘Keep it…’ Yuri snorts. ‘As if Chris ever wants anything kept decent.’

Chris has been completely fine about keeping his interactions with Viktor scrupulously decent. Viktor ought to be relieved, but it’s honestly a bit weird. He’s never spent this long in Chris's presence without getting groped, except over the summer, and then it was a bad sign.

‘Call him in here,’ Yuri says. ‘I want to say hi.’

‘Christ _oooophe_ ,’ Viktor calls. He can hear Chris move suddenly in the other room. ‘Come in here, there’s a beautiful man wants to talk to you!’

‘What’s up?’ Chris asks, and Viktor turns the tablet so he can see Yuri. ‘Oh, hi, Yuri.’ He flashes a grin at Viktor. ‘You said one beautiful man, I see _two_.’

‘You’re terrible,’ Viktor tells him.

‘You’re not exactly ugly yourself,’ Yuri tells Chris, and Chris preens. Viktor’s face curves helplessly into a smile, watching them. He reaches out and drags Chris onto the couch with him.

‘That’s a nice view,’ Yuri says, looking pleased with the pair of them. ‘Viktor, give the man a kiss for me, would you?’

Viktor raises an eyebrow at Chris, who shrugs, and Viktor leans in and kisses him. _Unless you want an audience_ , his mind echoes. Suddenly Viktor does, very much, want an audience. 

‘Satisfactory?’ he asks, pulling back from Chris to look at Yuri. 

‘It’ll do,’ Yuri says. There’s an awkward moment’s pause. Chris and Viktor are still squished together, Chris's legs half on top of Viktor’s. Viktor still has one hand on his shoulder blade. He hasn’t been _avoiding_ touching Chris, far from it, but they haven’t been pressed up against each other like this since… well, since December.

‘Chris,’ Yuri says, thoughtful, ‘I haven’t seen my husband for at _least_ a week. Would you kiss him for me?’

Viktor’s already leaning in when Chris plants a hand on his chest, and disentangles himself. 

‘No,’ he says. ‘No, Yuri. Viktor,’ he looks over at Viktor and Viktor realises he’s _hurt_ ; they’ve hurt Chris and Viktor doesn’t know how. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t… not…’

And Chris gets up and walks out.

* * *

There’s a sweet spot in the afternoon at the rink, before the after-school sessions and after the morning’s training is done. One of Chris's old rinkmates is there, running through compulsory figures at one end of the ice, but she waves to Chris and neither tries to talk nor indicates that she needs the whole space.

Chris's phone is on silent, but he shoves it into a shoe before he gets onto the ice. Doubly ignored. 

It’s quite some time before he looks around after hauling himself up from a bruising fall and realises the ice is empty except for him. He’s not sure how long he’s been there - he feels exhausted, like he might after hours of training, except he’s in such poor shape now it might have been only fifteen minutes.

Somewhere between fifteen minutes and three hours; missed jump after missed jump that sent him crashing into the ice. Bruises to show for it. Kneecap aching but still functional.

‘Those were double axels.’ Théo is leaning on the blocks, so still Chris hadn’t noticed him. 

‘They would’ve been if I landed them,’ Chris grouches.

‘Whatever it is Nikiforov did to you, maybe he should repeat it, if it means you’re doing axels again.’

Chris sighs, and skates over to him. ‘I take it he called you?’

‘It’s nice to know I’m not the only one you disappear on without a word.’

Chris rolls his eyes. ‘It’s been what, two hours? He’s staying in my apartment, I do realise I have to talk to him.’

Théo holds out his skate guards, and Chris steps out of the rink.

‘Are you going to tell me I walked right into this and should’ve expected it?’ Chris asks. He flops onto a bench and starts unlacing his skates. Théo sits down beside him, and nudges him gently.

‘I don’t even know what it is you walked into,’ Théo says. ‘Nikiforov just said he’d fucked up and if I knew where to find you, you probably needed company.’

By the time Chris gets home, he’s feeling kind of stupid. Still pissed, but a bit stupid for just how pissed he is. Viktor hears him at the front door, and appears in the hall. He’s tense, shoulders hunched, like he expects Chris to start yelling.

Chris holds out the grocery bag he’s holding. ‘I got ice-cream.’

Viktor stares at Chris like he’s grown an extra head.

‘And I’m not going to yell at you,’ Chris says.

‘Oh.’ Viktor looks faintly abashed, but relaxes a bit. ‘Okay.’

Chris crosses the half a metre between them and shoves the ice cream bag into Viktor’s hands. ‘Put that in the freezer, I’ve got to put my skating gear away.’

Viktor takes the ice cream and does as he’s told. By the time Chris has hung his skates, dumped his workout gear in the hamper, and done as many other minor chores as he can think of to keep him in his room for as long as he can, Viktor has made tea. Chris takes the mug he’s offered, and tries to figure out which of them is placating the other, exactly.

‘It’s a pity,’ Viktor says, wandering into the main room, ‘that you’re not going to yell at me.’

‘You want to be yelled at?’ Chris follows him, and sits at the table. Viktor sits on the couch, not quite facing him.

‘Well,’ Viktor says. ‘I wouldn’t enjoy it, but I might find out what I’d done wrong.’

Chris stares into his mug and does not shout about how the fact that Viktor needs him to spell it out is, in and of itself, the problem. 

‘Viktor. Vitya.’ Viktor’s head whips around at the nickname. It’s not like Chris just called him a super intimate term of endearment: half the Russian skaters call him that. It’s just that, by the time Chris figured out that ‘Vitya’ was what Viktor’s friends and colleagues called him, he’d already been _fucking_ Viktor and using his proper name. There didn’t seem much point switching, given that. He saves the diminutive for making fun of Viktor, and, even more rarely, times like this. When he needs to remind Viktor that they are, and have been for a very long time, close.

Close or not, this is not an easy conversation.

‘The thing is,’ Chris says, ‘you can have me on your terms: we can be friends, not lovers. That’s fine, we can do that. But you can’t have me as your friend-not-lover and also act like I am your lover whenever you and Yuri feel like playing that game.’ 

‘Oh,’ Viktor says. Chris expects argument, or protest. He doesn’t get either. Viktor drinks his tea, and after a while says, ‘I see. I’m sorry.’

* * *

17:30: FYI Chris is fine.  
17:31: Well, he’s home. He hasn’t yelled at me. I’m making tea.  
Yuri <3<3<3, 17:48: Good. It’s probably my fault anyway.  
Yuri <3<3<3, 17:53: Tell him I said I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.  
18:07: You should be asleep.  
18.07: Also he’s angry at me, not you, apparently. Well, maybe you a bit? I’m not sure. I’ll call you tomorrow.  
Yuri <3<3<3 18.08: Can’t sleep, I was worried. I seem to be good at fucking these things up. First Yuko, now Chris.  
18.09: At least we’re fucking up together.  
18.10: We’re having dinner with his partner and HIS partner tonight. Do you think they’ll kill me?  
Yuri <3<3<3 18.11: If they kill you I’ll have to kill them.  
18.12: Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.  
18.12: I feel like I’ve been called up for random doping tests. Only this time I have actually done something wrong.  
Yuri <3<3<3 18.13: Well… at least Théo probably won’t be collecting urine samples?  
18.13: No, but his girlfriend might straight-up murder me.  
Yuri <3<3<3 18.14: I think that’s an unlikely outcome.  
18.14: You haven’t met her.  
18.14: Go to sleep, love. Don’t worry about me.  
18.15: I’ll try.

* * *

Dinner turns out only about fifty percent as awkward as Chris expected. Théo is a pro at minding his own business: it’s possible his hand on Chris's waist is a little more proprietary than usual, but it’s hard to say if that’s because he knows Chris is hurt, or because he just plain likes feeling Chris up in front of other people. 

The whole thing is oddly like taking a girl, or boy as the case may be, to meet Nonna and Nonno, back when Chris was a lot younger and his grandparents still felt the need to be protective. Like those dates, Viktor swoons over the food (fair: Théo cooks nearly as well as Nonna does), and, exactly like those dates, they all get dragged into a conversation about Chris going back to university. Théo, like Stéphane, thinks he should get an MSc in sports science to go with his hard-won BSc in same. Anna thinks he’s enjoyed running around organising this show so much, he should look into degrees in management.

Chris threatens to go back to the Bachelor and do something weird.

‘History of Art,’ he says, and Viktor decides to take his side.

‘Film Studies,’ Viktor says. ‘Medieval literature.’ Chris shoots him a sidelong smile: he presumes Viktor doesn’t actually think he should study either of those things, but has picked up that Chris really isn’t ready to think seriously about studying anything. He’s not completely lacking in perception, despite his blind spots.

‘Italian, that would make Nonna happy,’ Chris suggests. Him going back to university at all would make Nonna happy.

‘You can’t do a degree just because it would make your Nonna happy,’ Anna says, stern.

‘Archaeology,’ Viktor says next, and this time he doesn’t sound as flippant as with the earlier suggestions. Then he smirks. ‘I hear archaeologists get to spend a lot of time on their knees.’ There’s a moment where they all try to figure out if that was a translation error, and Viktor smiles angelically. ‘Digging for things, of course,’ he says.

Théo laughs, and tells Viktor he has a good point. Anna laughs, but watches Viktor with sharp eyes for the rest of the meal.

Chris helps Théo wash up, and Anna takes Viktor out onto the balcony with the rest of the wine. Chris doesn’t think anything of that: Anna smokes, so disappearing outside is pretty common for her. Eventually Théo shoos him out of the kitchen, and Chris grabs extra glasses and another bottle of wine and goes to join them.

He pauses just inside the door, surprised to see Vikor smoking one of Anna’s cigarettes. He’s never seen Viktor smoke before. They’re standing close together, and Chris can just about catch what they’re saying.

‘... doesn’t normally get into relationships with married people,’ Anna is saying.

‘We’re not,’ Viktor says. His voice actually squeaks. ‘We’re not in a relationship.’

Chris can’t actually see Anna’s face but he can tell she’s giving Viktor the stink-eye. ‘If you mean you aren’t having sex with him,’ she says, ‘I know, and I want you to think very carefully about why you think that makes a difference.’

Viktor chokes on the smoke from his cigarette. ‘It just does,’ he says, sputtering.

‘Really?’ Anna angles her head in a way that Chris knows means she’s considering evisceration as a problem-solving method.

Chris slips out onto the balcony proper, and holds out the bottle of wine. ‘If I bring you wine,’ he says, to Anna, ‘will you stop tormenting him?’ He should be pissed at Anna for interfering in his love life - or whatever this is - but he isn’t. 

‘I’ll stop tormenting him,’ Anna says, fishing out another cigarette, ‘if he gives me another light.’

Viktor lights her cigarette. Théo comes out to join them. Chris pours wine for four. 

He expects Viktor to ask him about Anna’s interrogation, later: he has to know Chris overheard at least some of it. Viktor doesn’t, just rides the bus in silence. When they get home, Viktor goes straight to the main room, muttering an awkward goodnight over his shoulder. Chris lets that hang in the air for half a second, then follows Viktor and wordlessly sets about helping unfold the couch.

‘Thanks for coming tonight,’ he says, stepping back when the couch is unfolded and set up.

Viktor surprises him by reaching out and touching his shoulder. ‘Thanks for taking me,’ he says. ‘After…’ he doesn’t elaborate, but doesn’t need to. ‘You didn’t have to.’

The thing about Viktor is: it’s really hard to resent him even when Chris is angry for perfectly good reasons. It’s hard to resent him, and easy to reach out and hug him.

‘Goodnight, Viktor.’

* * *

**December 2018**

Viktor’s heart was in his throat by the time they made it back to the hotel. He didn’t know what he was feeling: excited by Chris's hand on his waist and hip bumping up against his? Incredibly relieved, giddy with the avoidance of a rejection he didn’t know he had been fearing? Warm and comfortable, like this was something they’ve done dozens of times before? It didn’t take long before Viktor had his hands all over Chris, but it was Yuri he leaned back into, Yuri’s thoughtful directions Viktor followed. It was Yuri who held Viktor’s hands behind his back and murmured praise in his ear while Viktor took Chris's dick as deep as he could, whispered about how he looked and how much Yuri loved him and how good he was for _both of them_.

‘Comfortable like they’ve done this dozens of times before’ ended up the dominant feeling, as the three of them sprawled in a faintly sticky pile on the rumpled hotel bed. Chris ended up being the one who got up and found a cloth, cleaned them all up, and then started looking for his clothes. Yuri realised was he was doing before Viktor did, and held out a hand in Chris's direction.

‘Stay here,’ Yuri said. ‘Bed’s big enough.’

Chris stopped, very still for a moment, and then simply asked, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Very,’ Yuri said. Chris looked to Viktor for confirmation, and Viktor slid over to make space between him and Yuri. Of course, this actually lasted about two minutes before they realised they were on top of, not under, the bedding, and none of them had brushed their teeth, and they’d all drunk enough wine that night that they ought to drink sensible glasses of water before falling asleep. Still, they ended up nestled together, Chris curled between Viktor and Yuri. Viktor hesitated for a second, unsure if he should sprawl all over Chris like he does Yuri. Chris solved the problem by tucking himself into Viktor’s side, pulling one of Yuri’s arms with him so Yuri’s palm ended up spread on Viktor’s hip and Chris's head on Viktor’s shoulder.

‘Goodnight, Chris,’ Yuri said, from Chris's other side, and Viktor echoed him. ‘Goodnight, Chris.’

* * *

**April 2019**

Chris is out to breakfast with Théo when his phone buzzes and he’s surprised to see it’s from Yuri.

Katsuki, 8.36: I think I owe you an apology.

Chris stares at it for a second, and then shifts the phone so Théo can see it. Théo just raises an eyebrow.

‘You’re not actually angry with him, are you?’ Théo asks.

‘I guess it’s as much his fault as Viktor’s,’ Chris says.

‘But you’re not angry with him.’

Chris unlocks his phone, uncertain what he’s actually going to say. ‘If I was, he’s balanced it out by having the sense to apologise himself as well as through Viktor.’

He ends up calling Yuri, from his favourite spot on Théo’s couch. He’d left Viktor with the spare key, a transport map, and an intention to go shopping: Chris doesn’t need to be home until lunchtime at least

‘Hey,’ Yuri says. ‘Chris. Hi. Sorry. Um.’

Yuri Katsuki might be the sensible one in the Katsuki-Nikiforov dreadful duo, and Chris _knows_ he is actually quite astute when it comes to emotions and relationships, but that doesn’t mean he’s not irredeemably awkward.

‘Hi Yuri,’ Chris says. ‘Apology accepted, on the condition that you tell me what _you_ think you’re apologising for.’

Yuri doesn’t answer that immediately, but makes a sort of humming noise that Chris takes as a sign he’s formulating the right response.

‘I talked to Nishigori today,’ Yuri says, and Chris has to mentally scramble to remember why that might be relevant. ‘Well. He talked to me. It’s weird, you know, we don’t actually talk much? It’s like Yuko and I do all the talking and Takeshi and I don’t need to. Wait. I’m babbling, aren’t I?’

‘A bit, yeah,’ Chris says, and finds himself smiling. This is new: there isn’t the same decade of baggage and fondness and sore points and unspoken agreement not to laugh _too_ much between him and Yuri that there is between him and Viktor. But this is Yuri, who had sat with Chris, just one hand on Chris's ankle, while Chris made that terrifying call to Théo, the one that allowed Chris to start slowly putting his life back on its axis. Listening to Yuri babble feels like fair exchange for that.

‘Right,’ Yuri says, audibly gathering himself. ‘You don’t need the full and embarrassing recount. The point is… I realised I shouldn’t do the same thing to you.’

‘Which thing?’ Chris can, if he squints, think of two or three things about the Nishigori situation which might be comparable to whatever the hell is going on with him and Viktor and Yuri, but none of them fit the comparison terribly well.

‘I mean, if I talk to Viktor and Viktor talks to you, but I never talk to you, things might get… lost.’

‘That’s assuming Viktor actually does talk to me,’ Chris says, and it comes out more bitter than he intended. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘That was unfair.’

Yuri just laughs. ‘ _He_ thinks he talks to you.’

‘Oh, he does, does he?’ Chris supposes it’s not untrue. Viktor has talked to him a lot about _Yuri_ , and about relationships in general, but the only time this week they’ve discussed the specific question of Chris-and-Viktor (or even Chris-and-Viktor-and-Yuri), it’s been because they couldn’t avoid it.

‘Yeah. He says we’ve been playing games with you,’ Yuri says, and his voice goes abruptly from laughing to sad. ‘Which is pretty much what Nishigori said to me today, so, uh, if it helps you’re not alone?’

‘If it helps,’ Chris parrots back, ‘you’re far from the first couple to make these mistakes. It’s practically a rite of passage, for people who start out monogamous.’ Yuri doesn’t say anything to that, so Chris goes on, ‘Indulge my curiosity and tell me what the situation is with you and Yuko and Takeshi, then?’

‘Nothing,’ Yuri says. ‘Well. I… I think I thought because they have each other, I don’t matter so much. Yuko has Takeshi, and I have Viktor, and we’ve done stuff _before_ , and I just thought it should be… easy.’

‘It’s not, then?’ Of course it’s not: for starters, ‘done stuff’ meant sleeping with them without Viktor’s knowledge or consent. Chris still doesn’t know how the hell that happened, and nor does he actually want to know. One thing he does know, from years of being in communities where violation-of-relationship-agreement tends to be a lot messier, and involve a lot more people, than it does for your average married couple, is that the outside parties - the person not in the longer-established relationship, the person who didn’t realise they were screwing up someone else’s agreement, the clueless third party who wandered into an existing clusterfuck - tend to get dropped. The anger on the part of the person, or people, betrayed and the guilt on the part of the person in the middle suck each other in, and feed each other, and it’s very easy to forget that other people got hurt, too.

And this, in short, is why Chris doesn’t usually get into things with with both halves of any sort of long-established couple.

‘Apparently I’m not the only person they… well. And I had no idea.’

‘Did you ever ask?’

‘I didn’t think to.’

‘Yuri?’ Chris isn’t quite sure if asking is a good idea, but Yuri makes an encouraging noise and he forges ahead. ‘Do _you_ know why Viktor’s not… I mean. You don’t seem to have a problem with hooking up with people without him, but he…’ Chris stops, suddenly, because the end of the sentence is a great big gaping chasm of _he doesn’t want me and I don’t know why_ , and fuck. He hadn’t realised just how deep that chasm ran.

‘Have you tried asking him that?’ Yuri asks.

* * *

Chris isn’t home when Viktor gets back, arms laden with shopping. He takes the opportunity to spread his purchases out across the table and sort out the ones that are going home with him to Japan from the ones that are getting posted to somewhere else. He has to stop to shake out and admire Yurio’s gift - it’s a pale pink t-shirt which declares, more or less, ‘Whatever, I don’t care, I’m a princess’. Obviously it’s a very apt gift. The real questions are: how long will it take for Yurio to translate the French? Will he have to consult Lilia? Will he call Viktor to abuse him before, or after, he models the shirt in ten million selfies?

Viktor is in the middle of this happy contemplation when the front door bangs and Chris's footsteps come into the hall. Viktor freezes, pink t-shirt in hand, and tries to remember what he had planned to do, or say, to Chris.

Chris wanders into the main room, stops, and takes in the sight of the items spread on the table. 

‘Oh, no,’ he says. ‘Who told you about that shop? It definitely wasn’t me.’

‘I _googled_ ,’ Viktor says.

‘Googled what? “Most embarrassing presents to get my husband”?’ Chris picks up a pair of ‘Prince Charming’ briefs from the pile - which is, for the record, not entirely composed of princess-themed items - and snickers.

‘Of course not,’ Viktor says. ‘Those are for me.’ He puts the princess shirt down and pulls out a swathe of fabric in much brighter pink. ‘ _This_ is for Yuri.’

‘Gluttony,’ Chris reads, off the apron front. ‘An indispensable quality in any princess worthy of the name.’

‘I, uh,’ Viktor says, and turns to the ‘not going to Japan’ pile. ‘I got you a cupcake.’ He picks up the box, and amends, ‘I couldn’t decide what colour so I got you four cupcakes.’ He turns to Chris, holding out the box like ludicrous peace offering it is, and is assailed by doubt. ‘Do you even like cupcakes?’

Chris takes the box, and doesn’t bother opening it, just sets it aside. ‘Yes, Viktor,’ he says. ‘I like cupcakes.’ 

‘Then what…’ Viktor stares at the abandoned box, and consequently only half-notices Chris stepping into his personal space. He does notice when he’s dragged into a hug. It’s a really nice hug, once Viktor gives up on worrying about the cupcakes and wraps his arms around Chris in turn. It’s the kind of hug that would be well-complimented by kissing, actually, but doesn’t _have_ to be, and Viktor has no idea what to do with that: that he wants both. He wants to hold Chris's face and kiss him with the kind of kisses you get to have when you know you’ll always have another chance, _and_ he wants this, wants to be able to tuck his head into Chris's neck and not have to worry about sex and all the consequences that come with it.

It is, probably, too late for that last bit.

‘Viktor?’ Chris asks, and by the tone of his voice Viktor can tell that yes, it is definitely too late for that. ‘Why _aren’t_ we talking about… why you don’t want to sleep with me?’ Viktor clings to the last shred of avoidance offered, and keeps his face in Chris's neck. ‘I mean,’ Chris says, ‘it’s actually okay if you don’t. But not talking about it is… confusing as all hell.’

‘I don’t know.’ Viktor gives in to the inevitable and steps out of the hug, far enough to look Chris in the eyes. Chris keeps a hand on Viktor’s waist, though. ‘I don’t know how to…’

‘You don’t know what?’ Chris looks like he might laugh at Viktor, which, to be perfectly honest, would be an improvement. ‘You don’t know why we’re not talking about it; or we can’t talk about it because you don’t know why you don’t want to?’ 

Viktor’s pretty sure, from the twitch in Chris's body, that that sentence didn’t end the way it had in the first draft in Chris's head. Something about that realisation knocks into something else in Viktor’s head, and the next words out of his mouth are ones he hadn’t predicted or even really realised himself:

‘I don’t know if I want to,’ he says.

Chris looks at him for a second, and then lets go of Viktor’s waist and drops into one of the chairs at the table.

‘You don’t have to,’ he says. ‘It’s just that… if that’s the way it is, then anything with all three of us, you and me and Yuri, has to stay separate.’ Viktor’s not sure whether to be relieved about that: yesterday, he’d thought Chris meant there wasn’t going to be anything more between the three of them, and maybe there never should have been.

‘Sit down,’ Chris says, and Viktor realises he’s been standing and staring. Chris kicks out a chair, but Viktor doesn’t sink into it. Not yet.

‘I mean,’ Viktor says. ‘I mean I don’t know if I _don’t_ want to, either.’ Chris's eyes go wide. ‘I know,’ Viktor says, and he does sit down now, balling his fists into his lap in frustration. ‘I know, people are just supposed to _know_ things like this.’

‘And if you don’t know,’ Chris says, slowly, ‘then in general, it’s better to act as if the answer is going to be no?’

Viktor nods. He hadn’t put it quite that way, but that’s more or less it. The version in his own head is more like ‘I, Viktor Nikiforov, renowned figure skater and Olympian, managed to figure out one thing I really wanted, and I got him. It’s distinctly unfair that the whole wanting-things process didn’t stop there, because actually, I really suck at wanting things that aren’t medals or Yuri Katsuki.’

‘And you didn’t tell me this because… you thought I’d put pressure on you?’ Chris's face goes from thoughtful to horrified in the space of the sentence. Viktor shakes his head, emphatic.

‘Because it’s _stupid_ ,’ Viktor says. ‘You manage things like this all the time. _Yuri_ can figure this sort of thing out fine. Or, well, I thought he could, although the way things are going maybe he sucks as much as I do.’ At least Yuri knows what he _wants_ , though. He’s fantasised about Yuko, and Yuko and Takeshi together, for years: he felt guilty about it, for a while, until Viktor figured out what was going on and took to shamelessly encouraging it (the results, in terms of Viktor getting laid, had been spectacular, although the one attempt at a foursome had fallen dead in the water).

‘Viktor,’ Chris says, and he’s back to that fond, half-laughing tone that Viktor knows so well he can intuit it from text messages. ‘I’ll let you in on a secret: everyone sucks at this sort of thing.’

This would be more reassuring if it weren’t evident that many people suck _less_ at this than Viktor.

* * *

**December 2018**

The falling asleep three-to-a-bed hadn’t been as weird as it might have, all things considered. Waking up, though. That was where Yuri’s brain started its hamster-wheel again. He’d been woken up by the sound of someone banging a door elsewhere in their corridor, and rolled, barely conscious, into what his brain simply expected to be Viktor’s body beside him. Not just rolled. _Snuggled_. Spooned into. Complete with semi-intentionally rubbing his crotch up against the conveniently available ass.

Which wasn’t Viktor’s ass. Yuri noticed this about the point he noticed his fingers were buried in chest hair, not Viktor’s meticulously waxed pecs (nor the weird stubble of Viktor-can’t-be-bothered-rewaxing-his-chest-just-yet, a texture of which Yuri had become peculiarly fond).

Yuri did not leap backwards out of the bed, because his higher brain came online and reminded him that both chest hair and ass, and indeed the rest of the body, belonged to Chris. Yuri was quite familiar with Chris's body by now, for both sex and snuggling purposes, it was just he’d never woken up to it. He tried to put a tasteful inch or so between his dick and Chris's ass. It might have been unnecessary, given he’d had his dick _in_ Chris's ass only last night, but somehow there seemed to be a difference between fucking someone, and subjecting them to the close-up experience of your morning hard-on.

Thinking about fucking wasn’t helping with the morning hard-on situation. Nor was the fact that Chris arched, pushing his hips back toward Yuri’s, seeking contact or warmth or, very possibly, the specific and deliberate experience of Yuri’s morning hard-on. The chances of it being the latter increased exponentially when Chris muttered ‘Mmm, morning,’ and rolled a little toward Yuri. On his other side, Viktor made an undignified snorting noise and gave no indication of waking up any time soon.

Yuri still didn’t leap out of the bed, but he did sit up, disentangling himself from Chris as he went.

‘Morning,’ he said. ‘I’m… going to shower.’

By the time he was done, Chris was sitting up, reading something on his phone. Viktor was still dead to the world, and Yuri was starting to feel a bit silly about having freaked out. At least he’d kept it to himself. Or he thought he had, but Chris's words on seeing Yuri step out of the shower were,

‘Everything okay?’

Yuri nodded. ‘Of course. Everything’s okay.’

‘If you need time out, I can head home now,’ Chris said. ‘Or in five minutes, when I’ve got dressed.’

Yuri looked instinctively toward Viktor. If Yuri let, or worse, _made_ Chris leave before Viktor woke up, Viktor would… Yuri didn’t actually have words for the emotion he expected Viktor would feel, but he knew exactly what it would look like in his eyes: a mixture of confusion and trepidation that Yuri had no intention of causing if he can help it.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ Chris said, quietly. ‘You’re allowed to need space.’ 

Yuri blinked for a second, and then remembered: he _had_ needed a lot of time alone, in the last week or so when Chris was in Hasetsu and Yuri and Viktor were trying both not to get in over their heads and to rapidly cover all the things they suddenly very much wanted to do with him. Chris had called it ‘top drop’, but it wasn’t really about the sex, in Yuri’s head. Chris had kept sleeping in the spare room, too, and Yuri suspected that was out of a similar need: needing to be alone, to remind himself where the edges of his own self were. It gets easier, after a while, with someone you know well, like Yuri knew Viktor by that point: years into their marriage, he could take it for granted that all the bits of himself are still where they were, bumping up against Viktor’s self like loosely-fitted puzzle pieces. Throw in another person, or a big change or a bad mistake, and all the points of intersection needed checking again.

‘I know,’ Yuri said, and found himself smiling. ‘I’ll go out and get breakfast, and bring it back. Do you want coffee with milk, or espresso?’ Viktor will take the foamiest cappuccino he can get, and Yuri will have espresso and then horrify anyone around by putting so much sugar in it the popsicle stick basically stands on end.

‘ _Renversé_ ,’ Chris says, and Yuri recognises that by now as some kind of abomination that lies on a spectrum between a cappuccino and an Americano with milk. He can probably even manage to order it, too. Now that he plans this out in his head, going on a solo mission for breakfast in a country where he doesn’t speak the local language sounds like a terrible idea. He keeps Viktor around for this kind of thing: aside from the fact that Viktor _does_ speak French, Viktor also doesn’t care about about embarrassing himself in unfamiliar places. Viktor can order breakfast by interpretive dance, it it comes to it. 

Viktor is currently sound asleep and drooling, and Chris is stroking his hair softly, careful not to wake him. 

‘I’ll be back soon,’ Yuri says, and heads out, reminding himself that service staff here - just like his family, you’d think growing up in an inn would have taught him this - deal with tourists in English every day, and can definitely sell him croissants and coffee. Which he will then bring back and eat with his husband, and their… Yuri’s mind stalls for a second over what term to apply to Chris, and he finds himself grinning as he exits the elevator. 

When he gets back, they’re both awake, and Yuri hands them coffee and kisses them each in turn. His husband and their _lover_.

* * *

**April 2019**

‘Hey,’ Chris says, ‘some of the derby girls are having a party tomorrow. Madeline specifically asked if I was going to bring my “very charming friend”.’ Viktor has no idea who Madeline is, other than a woman who enjoys a violent recreational sport on wheels. 

‘Should I wear my new “charming” briefs, then?’ Viktor asks. 

Chris snickers, and gives him a considering look. It’s upside-down, since Chris is draped on the couch and Viktor is standing behind his head, but it’s considering all the same. ‘Well, _I_ wasn’t planning on stripping down, but if you want to, go right ahead.’ Viktor is about to make some kind of protest - he’d only been joking, he doesn’t plan to get naked - when Chris adds, ‘Anna’s bringing Théo, and Théo is probably bringing the collapsible pole. The girls are big fans of the collapsible pole.’

‘So _you_ definitely are getting your trousers off,’ Viktor says, giving up on making Chris crane backwards and coming around to stand in his line of sight. ‘I don’t know much about pole dancing but I know you can’t do it in trousers.’

‘We could _teach_ you about pole dancing,’ Chris says. Then, after a second, he adds, ‘Wait, hasn’t Yuri taught you anything about it? He’s clearly had training.’

Viktor shrugs. ‘We haven’t got a pole. He learned in Detroit: I don’t know if there’s anyone in the entirety of Hasetsu who has a pole.’

‘That’s tragic.’

‘Not really,’ Viktor says. ‘In the absence of a pole, one has to resort to climbing one’s husband. And this,’ he puts his hand over his heart, ‘is a service I am happy to provide.’

Should this be odd? Making innuendos about Yuri with Chris? Viktor considers that for a moment, then remembers that Chris has been commenting on Yuri’s ass since the night Viktor first met Yuri.

‘You make a convincing argument,’ Chris says. ‘So, do you want to go to the party tomorrow?’

Viktor nods, happy enough. Any time he’s visited Chris, except for last December, he’s tailed Chris around to parties and bars and it’s worked out great. He likes Chris's friends. Aside from Théo and now Anna, he can’t actually remember any of Chris's old friends, from before the accident, and the derby girls seem to be a new group, but that’s not the point. Chris's friends are reliably interesting, and tend not to demand things of Viktor that can’t be dealt with by buying them drinks and lighting their cigarettes.

‘I know I’m pretty,’ Chris says, and Viktor realises he’s been standing there staring, ‘but you could sit down and admire me, my neck is starting to hurt from staring up at you.’

‘Bullshit,’ Viktor says, but he sits down when Chris makes room for him on the couch. Chris winks at him. Viktor thinks _I don’t know that I don’t want to_. He feels like he’s been asked to do one of those interactive activities in a museum, the ones where you put your hands inside a drawer and figure out what the thing is by touch alone. Only he hasn’t been asked _what is it_ : he’s been asked _do you want it_ , and if he takes too long feeling around the edges of it, trying to figure out if it’s even a single object, someone might slam the drawer shut on his fingers.

He pulls just one thing out of the mystery box and focuses on that alone. 

‘Hey, Chris,’ he says, and Chris raises one eyebrow. ‘Can I…?’ Chris doesn’t object, so Viktor shuffles sideways and insinuates himself under Chris's arm. Chris is still for a second, then wraps said arm around Viktor’s side and wriggles so they’re slumped sideways and properly tangled up. ‘Yeah, that’s nice,’ Viktor says. It is: it’s comfortable, like they do this all the time. Like they’re the kind of friends who’ve always piled on top of each other. ‘This is… okay, right? I just want...’ He lets it trail off, feeling stupid.

Chris spares a hand to stroke Viktor’s hair. ‘Yes,’ he says. And then, after a while: ‘It’s not a package deal, you know. Wanting things. You don’t have to want the same things from me that you want from Yuri - yes, I know you know that,’ he says, over Viktor’s half-formed protest. ‘You don’t have to want the same things you and Yuri want from me _together_ , either.’

Viktor rests his head on Chris's chest and lets his mind wander, lets himself feel out the shape of the thing without having to name it.

‘Would this have been better,’ Viktor asks, into the skin of Chris's neck. ‘If we’d done this on Sunday?’

Chris goes very still for a moment. ‘Maybe,’ he says. ‘Maybe not. Depends what ‘this’ is.’

Viktor turns the object in the metaphorical drawer drawer around again. ‘I mean,’ he says, slowly, and Chris waits without comment. ‘I mean, what if I wanted… this kind of thing. More than friendly, but not exactly…’

The problem is, Viktor’s talked to Yuri about this. About the mistake they’ve both made, taking chances on what other people want or _don’t_ want. Large parts of Viktor scream that this is, in fact, a selfish request to make. Selfish, unorthodox, poised halfway between friendship and love. 

Chris, though, laughs. ‘You’re saying you want me as a friend-with-cuddling-benefits?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Viktor says. ‘But… yeah.’ He closes his eyes, and drags up something Yuri had said to him yesterday. ‘The thing is, what doesn’t work is us - me, really, what doesn’t work is me trying to treat you like we _didn’t_ have sex only a few months ago. Or like we didn’t say we might do it again.’

Chris gives that a second, and then says, ‘That’s a reasonable summary of the situation, yes.’

‘I trust you,’ Viktor says, and the solid truth of that grounds him. ‘I don’t trust many people, Chris, not like…’ Not like you and Yuri, is the end of the sentence, but it still feels a bit weird, a bit wrong, to put the two of them together like that.

Chris wriggles a little, and puts a bit of space between them: enough to lift Viktor’s face out of where he’s got it tucked into Chris's shoulder. His hands on Viktor’s face are gentle and his expression is questioning.

‘Can I kiss you?’ Chris asks. Viktor must go rigid at that, because Chris's thumb brushes gently over his cheek. ‘Just that. If we’re asking for things we want… that’s something I want.’

‘Why?’ Viktor asks. His mouth has gone very dry, which is unfortunate, if kissing is in his immediate future.

Chris makes a frustrated little noise, and then lets Viktor go and settles back into the arm of the couch. The extra space between them is definitely an unpleasant development. 

‘Because,’ Chris says. He sighs, looks up at the ceiling. ‘Because if you’re going to snuggle up to me like that, I’m going to want to kiss you. Not fucking you, I can do. I’ve had partners before who I don’t fuck, or not that often. Not kissing, though, that’s going to be a lot harder.’

The word _partner_ fits surprisingly easily into the space in Viktor’s head. He turns the mystery object in the drawer around another ninety degrees and wonders if that’s what its name is.

‘Okay.’

Chris just looks at him, and Viktor realises it’s on him to do this. He leans into Chris's body - warm, familiar, and yet charged with possibilities - and kisses him.

* * *

It’s April, so Yuri’s training schedule is light, but Fridays are his afternoons with the triplets. Somehow, he’s ended up teaching the three of them, in addition to their actual classes with Minako. It’s ridiculous: either Yuko or Takeshi could give them extra coaching if they needed it, and probably better than Yuri can. When he pointed that out, Takeshi had sworn that he, for one, spends enough time trying to teach the little hooligans to act like civilised humans, he’s not taking on teaching them to skate. Yuko had just smiled and reminded Yuri that neither he nor Viktor pay rink fees. 

So now on Fridays Yuri spends a good hour trying to convince three eleven-year-olds that there is absolutely no point learning new jumps if they can’t demonstrate mastery of the skating skills they’re already supposed to have. It’s actually kind of fun, if Yuri ignores Minako making significant noises about going into business with him when he retires.

This week the triplets are fractious: Axel has cut off all her hair with the kitchen scissors, and her sisters are refusing to turn down any opportunity to point out how bad it looks. It does look pretty terrible, Yuri has to concede, but Axel insists it looks exactly how she wanted it to look. Yuri makes non-committal noises and makes them skate compulsory figures until they shut up.

Yuri sticks his head into the office before he herds the kids out to take them home. Yuko works the skate hire for the friday afternoon disco skate, so Yuri shepherds the kids home and hands them over to Takeshi. This week, though, he’s surprised to find Takeshi sitting on the edge of the desk. Yuko, who’s doing something on the computer, spins around when she hears Yuri open the door, and Yuri finds himself caught between both of their gazes.

‘Hi, Yuri,’ Yuko says, and there’s no sign of Monday’s anger or confusion in her face. She’d forgiven him easily: only now does Yuri realise how very many things she’s forgiven him, all equally easily, over the years. ‘We were wondering, what are you doing on Sunday?’

Viktor doesn’t get back until late Monday night.

‘Nothing, that I know of,’ Yuri says. Takeshi, who smiles a lot less often than Yuko does, and who _doesn’t_ forgive Yuri’s mistakes so easily, smiles at him. Yuri’s mouth goes dry.

‘Minako’s taking the triplets to the movies in the afternoon,’ Yuko says, ‘and then she’s _voluntarily_ invited them to dinner.’ 

‘I think she promised to teach them to make mocktails,’ Takeshi says. 

‘We find it best not to ask,’ Yuko says, which is definitely the right policy. The triplets are good for Minako - she doesn’t drink with them around, and she seems to genuinely _enjoy_ her self-appointed position as disreputable aunt. That’s good enough. 

‘Anyway.’ Yuko looks up at Yuri with her eyes wide. It’s hard to tell, because Yuko is short so she’s always looking up at him, but Yuri has a suspicion the wide-eyes thing is on purpose. ‘Can we take you out to dinner?’

‘I,’ Yuri says. ‘Uh.’ And then, when the sky stubbornly fails to fall in. ‘Dinner. Yes.’

‘A date,’ Takeshi clarifies. ‘A dinner-date.’

‘And _only_ a date,’ Yuko says. She bats her eyelashes, which is _definitely_ not just how her face is. ‘We wouldn’t want you to think we’re easy.’

Yuri’s mental wheels spin, trying to find where the trick here is. There doesn’t seem to be one.

‘If you’re taking _me_ to dinner,’ he says, after a moment, ‘isn’t the question whether _I’m_ easy?’

‘Oh,’ Takeshi says, and he doesn’t bat his eyes. He rolls them. ‘You’re hard work, we know that.’

* * *

‘Your friends are fun,’ Viktor says. Then he walks into the doorframe on his way to the kitchen.

‘My derby friends are great,’ Chris says. His other friends are great, too, but the derby girls particularly. ‘Hey, pass me a glass too?’ Viktor, who has just filled up a glass at the sink, hands it to Chris and fetches himself another one.

‘You know what I like about refereeing?’ Chris asks, having downed half the glass and stopped to breathe.

‘Other than watching attractive people beat each other up?’ 

‘Have you ever known me to vote for watching when I could be the attractive person being beaten up, darling?’ 

‘Point,’ Viktor says. ‘You do have pretty strong preferences. So what is it, then?’

Chris finishes his drink and stares at the glass for a second. They’re both fairly drunk. ‘It sort of is that,’ he says. ‘Referees, we’re there to make sure everything… works out. If someone’s actually injured we have to stop it, and you pull people out for penalties, and even keeping track of the score, that’s about making sure everyone’s playing by the rules.’

‘Somehow,’ Viktor says, refilling his own glass, ‘the phrase “Christophe Giacometti, fan of playing by the rules” just doesn’t seem to sound right to me.’ Chris holds out his glass and Viktor fills it again. 

‘It’s just… nice,’ Chris says. He drinks the second glass of water, and then adds, ‘It’s really important and the whole thing wouldn’t work without referees, but if you do it right, none of the audience are paying any attention to you at all. That’s pretty cool.’

‘Kind of like coaching,’ Viktor says. 

‘Like coaching if you aren’t in a headline-grabbing celebrity romance with your skater,’ Chris says, because like hell has Viktor ever done anything that means stepping out of the limelight.

Viktor just snorts, which means Chris is right and he knows it.

‘You do have pretty strong preferences,’ Viktor says, and looks at him funny. They aren’t, Chris thinks, really drunk enough to be repeating random sentences without cause or reason.

‘We have to be on a train just after nine,’ Chris says. ‘We should…’ He makes a vague gesture in the direction of the main room, where the couch needs folding out. They should’ve done that before they went out, he supposes. Too late now.

Viktor catches hold of his wrist and pulls him in. Chris goes, because of course he does. Has there ever really been a time when he could say no to Viktor fucking Nikiforov and his fucking mixed signals? 

Viktor kisses him like a question mark.

‘What’s this about, Viktor?’ Chris says, low-voiced.

‘You have pretty strong preferences,’ Viktor repeats, again. Chris notices that his fingers are tangled in Viktor’s hair, which is soft and lovely even if it is thinning on top, and Chris knows exactly what Viktor’s face looks like when his hair is pulled.

‘I can be flexible,’ Chris says, and pulls on the hair. Viktor makes a soft, surprised noise and clutches at Chris's arms. 

‘I don’t want…’ Viktor says, looking a bit shaken. He perseveres, though. ‘I don’t need you to dominate me, either.’

Suddenly, a whole lot of things make sense to Chris that probably should’ve been obvious before. But for fuck’s sake, he thinks, it’s been _over a decade_. Over a decade, multiple threesomes, and they’ve both changed so much.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Chris says, and leans in to kiss the side of Viktor’s neck. ‘New trend. All the cool kids are doing it. You might not have heard of it, though, I’m not sure they have it in Japan or Russia yet. It’s called _vanilla sex_.’

‘Oh my… shut the fuck up,’ Viktor says, and kisses Chris. He’s still bigger than Chris is, and it’s not like Chris is putting up a fight, so Chris ends up pressed back into the kitchen doorframe, being kissed to within an inch of his life.

Then Chris takes Viktor to bed, and kisses him some more, and peels his clothes off him. 

‘Just this?’ Viktor asks, sounding surprised, when Chris gets his hand around Viktor’s dick and Viktor’s hand around his in turn.

‘Unless you’ve got a complaint to make,’ Chris says. Viktor kisses him and kisses him and they shake apart like that, tangled up in each other and barely moving aside from little shifts of hands and hips.

‘I didn’t think…’ Viktor says, when Chris hands him a tissue. He looks a bit lost. ‘I guess I didn’t think that was an option.’

Chris, having cleaned himself up, sprawls out and pulls Viktor into the crook of his arm. ‘You say that like no one ever gave you a sloppy drunk handjob before.’ They’re not actually all that drunk, anymore, but the point stands.

Viktor’s quiet, for a moment, and then he says, ‘Well. Only one person, really.’

‘Is that… a problem?’ Chris is fairly sure Yuri doesn’t have a problem with him sleeping with Viktor, but if there’s some kind of agreement about the exclusiveness of sloppy handjobs, it would’ve been nice if one of them had said so.

‘No,’ Viktor says, after a second’s thought. ‘I just… well, he was pretty inexperienced, and then we’re _married_ , everyone does that kind of thing when they’re married.’ Chris tries to follow the logic, and comes up blank, but fortunately Viktor goes on. ‘I… when it’s other people it’s supposed to be more… something. More interesting.’

‘I’m not bored. Are you bored?’ Chris pokes Viktor in the ribs, and he squeaks in surprise.

‘No,’ Viktor admits. 

‘I have an incredibly creative boyfriend,’ Chris says, sitting up to turn out the light. Viktor makes no move to shift out of his bed, which is good. ‘And I know places to go and people to hit up if I’m looking for casual excitement.’ He leans in and kisses Viktor on the temple, because he _can_ , and then finds himself laughing. ‘In fact, if you want to keep this low-tech and vanilla, congratulations, you can be a rare and fascinating aberration in my love life.’

Viktor doesn’t protest the phrase _love life_. He just says,

‘Oh, good, I’ve always wanted to be a rare and fascinating aberration.’

* * *

It’s late in the evening for Yuri by the time Viktor’s rehearsal is over, but he’s awake and answers the call with video when it comes in. He has to get Viktor to turn _his_ video off pretty much immediately, because wherever he is, it’s outside, and the lighting is terrible. 

‘Where are you and why must you shine the sun in my eyes from the other side of the world?’ 

‘I, uh,’ Viktor says. ‘Some kind of park. There’s a whole wall of statues.’

‘I’m not even going to ask if you know how to get back to your hotel or the rink,’ Yuri says, smiling idiotically at the screen. 

‘I have google,’ Viktor says, breezily. He is, after all this time, still incredibly predictable.

‘How’s the show?’

‘Oh, fine,’ Viktor says. ‘The skating part is fine. Chris is going out of his mind over something to do with ticket mis-allocation, but I’m sure he’ll figure it out.’

Yuri picks up his tablet and readjusts it so he can lie down on the couch without cutting his head off the picture. 

‘And how is Chris?’ He’d woken up this morning to a series of texts from Viktor about sleeping with Chris. Apparently it’s very important that this consisted mainly of mutual handjobs. Yuri isn’t sure _why_ that’s important, but a clarification came in later in the day, after Viktor and Chris had woken up and were on their way to rehearsal in Geneva, to the effect that this was a good arrangement.

Yuri is quite proud of himself for managing to get through the evening without texting Chris and demanding the gossip from him. Whatever he got from Chris would undoubtedly make more sense than Viktor's version, but Yuri wants the Viktor version first.

‘He's fine,’ Viktor says. ‘We're fine. We just… you know. It was nice.’ Yuri is willing to bet that Viktor is blushing right now. ‘This is weird to talk about over the phone.’

‘It's okay,’ Yuri says. He doesn't actually need a blow-by-blow account. ‘I just want to know you guys are okay.’

Viktor's quiet for a moment, and then he asks, in a low voice, ‘Yuri? We're going to keep seeing Chris, aren't we?’

‘Of course,’ Yuri says, at once. ‘I guess whether or not we have sex with him depends on what you two work out.’ And that makes for an uncomfortable realisation: Yuri likes Chris, loves the kind of sex the three of them have together, but whether or not he gets to do that again is almost entirely out of his hands. ‘But yeah, of course we're going to keep seeing him. You guys stayed friends through your epic breakup, you'll survive this.’

‘It wasn't a breakup if we weren't ever together,’ Viktor protests. Yuri just snorts: it very clearly _was_ a breakup. ‘It’s different though,’ Viktor says, and Yuri thinks he’s going to say it’s different now because of him, of the open-marriage thing they’re slowly working out. He doesn’t. ‘I see Chris because of skating, or because I just happened to be in Paris and it’s only a few hours on the train, and… well, now he’s retired and so am I. And you will be, too, soon.’

‘He’ll be doing ice shows by next season,’ Yuri says. He can’t see Viktor’s face but he can picture it perfectly, with its adorable mixture of hesitance and vulnerability. Or maybe he’s got his public-persona face on, if he’s out in a park: maybe the hesitance is only in his voice, only for Yuri to intuit. ‘If you go into choreography or broadcasting after I retire, you’ll probably run into each other all over the place.’ They currently have a moratorium on talking about what _Yuri_ does after he retires. If anyone pushes him on it, Yuri says that he’s going to work in the onsen for at least a month so his parents can take a proper holiday.

‘I guess…’ Viktor says, still hesitant. ‘I guess it’s just weird, not _knowing_.’

Yuri turns that around and around in his mind, and comes back to the original question. ‘Viktor, you _want_ to keep seeing Chris, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Viktor says. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then we can do that. We can _make_ that happen, if that’s what you want.’

* * *

‘If I can get the funds again,’ Lambiel is saying, ‘we’ll do it again next year.’ 

Chris knows that’s a fairly big ‘if’ - shows like this don’t actually make profit, and there have been years before this that Stéphane has tried to stage Ice Legends and had it fall through for lack of sponsorship or civic support. That doesn’t stop Chris leaning across the table.

‘Count me in,’ he says. ‘Earlier, even: let me know if you want help with proposals and funding requests.’ He’s still a bit surprised at how much he enjoyed it, all the administration and organisation work, but he did. 

Stéphane leans across the table to meet him, and pokes him in the chest. ‘I want you on the posters next time, Giacometti.’

‘Good idea.’ That comes from the woman on Stéphane’s other side, one half of an ice-dancing pair from Denmark. ‘His ass would sell more tickets.’

It takes Chris's brain a few seconds to catch on, but then he feels like cold water has been dumped down his back. 

‘No, I,’ he says. ‘I don’t know…’ Viktor shifts closer, pressing his shoulder up against Chris's. He doesn’t say anything, but the touch is comforting.

‘You’re recovering from an injury, Giacometti,’ Lambiel says, ‘you’re not _dead_. No one’s asking you to land a quad lutz. You need to keep your hand in if you’re going to be coaching or choreographing.’

‘Ku-riiis,’ Viktor says, in a worryingly accurate imitation of Yuri’s ballet teacher, ‘if I never see you in spandex again, I shall pine forever.’

‘I’ll… I’ll think about it,’ Chris says, and Stéphane seems to accept that. Viktor makes puppy eyes at him. Chris will also think about Viktor pining for the sight of his ass in spandex, because, exaggeration or not, that’s a nice image.

Later, when Chris is checking his phone for the train timetable, Viktor stops him, one hand on his wrist.

‘Stay,’ he says. That has to mean _stay with me_ , because Chris hasn’t got a hotel reservation in Geneva - why, when his own bed is barely ninety minutes away?

Chris isn’t sure what he expects when they get back to Viktor’s hotel room, but it isn’t being backed into a wall. That’s what he gets, though, and he has no objections.

‘I’ve thought of something else I want,’ Viktor says, voice low.

‘Oh?’ If Viktor decides that _now_ he wants to dom the hell out of Chris, if that’s suddenly safe and okay because Viktor has a flight back to Japan tomorrow, Chris… should punch him, or say no in a dignified fashion and depart the premises. He won’t, though. He’ll drop to his fucking knees and won’t even put up a fight. He’ll be angry about it later, but won’t really be able to regret it.

‘I want you to come and stay with us for a while this summer,’ Viktor says, and Chris has to take a second to haul his thoughts out of dismal prediction. ‘I want to see you… I want you to come and visit me. Us,’ he corrects, and then modifies, ‘us, but also, me.’

‘You do?’ Chris's mind is still trying to catch up, but his arms are ahead of him, pulling Viktor’s body closer.

‘I do,’ Viktor says. ‘I… I don’t think I can do this on a case-by-case basis. I want to know there’s probably a _next time_.’

Chris leans up just a little bit and kisses Viktor. It’s mean to be quick, part comfort, part giving Chris a moment before he opens his mouth and says something embarrassing: but of course it doesn’t stay that way. Viktor practically melts into him, and Chris clings back.

‘You can have as many next times as you like,’ Chris says, when he gets a moment to breathe. ‘You, Yuri. You and Yuri, but…’ He finds he can’t actually look Viktor in the eye when he admits the last bit, but he manages to admit it anyway. ‘Mostly you.’

Viktor ducks his head and kisses Chris again, and then says, into the tiny space between them, ‘Take me to bed.’

Chris does, although that requires Viktor first stop pinning Chris to the wall. Chris sprawls on the hotel bed and pulls Viktor after him.

‘Can I blow you?’ Chris asks. ‘Is that…’ He can’t seriously think that blowjobs _don’t_ count as low-tech and vanilla, but it feels important to ask anyway.

‘Yes, yes, please,’ Viktor says, and that’s good enough for Chris.

* * *

12.15: We have passed safely through the Cheese Smell Zone and checked my bags. Only airport coffee can console me now.  
Yuri <3<3<3 12.15: I want chocolate. Some of that chocolate with cherry liqueur in it.  
12.18: Of course. I’m buying that airside and bringing it carry-on, the liqueur goes funny if you put it in the hold.  
Yuri <3<3<3 12.18: Is Chris with you?  
12.19: He says hi.  
12.19: Actually he blows you a kiss.  
12.19: <img attached>  
Yuri <3<3<3 12.20: Should I send one back like that?  
Yuri <3<3<3 12.20: Or can I ask you to do it for me?  
Yuri <3<3<3 12.21: Is that okay now?  
12.21: Does it help if I say I’ve been given a kiss and am under strict instructions to transfer it directly to you?  
Yuri <3<3<3 12.22: As long as you don’t get it lost along the way. Don’t leave it unattended!  
12.22: I wouldn’t dream of it.

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES:
> 
> \- The assorted princess-themed garments do exist, and they can be purchased from [Royaume Melazic](https://melazic.com/2-royaume-melazic) in Lausanne.  
> \- Kirsch chocolate is [also a thing](https://www.coopathome.ch/en/Food-Cupboard/Chocolate-%26-Confectionery/Chocolate-Bars/With-Alcohol/Camille-Bloch-Chocolate-Bar-with-Kirsch-Crust/p/3002245), and it really does go weird if you put it in the hold of a plane. The filling sort of crystallises.  
> \- There really is a Cheese Smell Zone. This fic largely exists because I walked through the Cheese Smell Zone back in March and had a vision of Viktor’s horror at having to encounter it en route to visit Chris.
> 
> CAVEATS LECTORS and notes-before-you-comment:
> 
> Treat this as a sequel to Things Left Undone / House of Broken Bones / Fidelitas Amicorum. If you haven't read those, this is probably not for you. A number of the 'background' tags are re: stuff covered there (bdsm, past infidelity). In addition, very tiny changes were made to 'Bright, Ridiculous Things' to make room for this in the timeline.
> 
> Regarding tags: I am not a mind-reader or a wizard. I have tagged the things I think most likely to advertise a fic, and some known hot button issues. I cannot, however, predict every possible squick or trigger. Aside from those listed under the archive warnings, which I can vouch are not here, you have to accept the risk that I've just not thought of your particular least fave thing.
> 
> Regarding comments: rule one is be civil. I am very much not here for slut-shaming rhetoric, please and thank you. I direct your attention back up to the polyamory tag and ask that you try to take that into account. When it comes to characterisation, I am not interested in arguing about why your headcanon is better than mine: if you ask me WHY I've characterised someone a given way, I can probably answer, but if your problem is 'my headcanon is Viktor is super monogamous and this fic doesn't match it you're wrong' or other complaints along those lines, don't even bother.
> 
> Related: in before 'I think X character was selfish here'. And? So? Practically everyone in this series could be called selfish at some point. In my experience, most humans are.


End file.
